


brother's shadow

by breadofthewild



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Male-Female Friendship, Mentioned Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Mentioned Glenn Fraldarius, Mentioned Sylvain Jose Gautier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22078240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breadofthewild/pseuds/breadofthewild
Summary: The three times Ingrid sees Felix as Glenn, and the one time she doesn't.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Ingrid Brandl Galatea, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Ingrid Brandl Galatea, Glenn Fraldarius/Ingrid Brandl Galatea
Comments: 4
Kudos: 59





	brother's shadow

**Author's Note:**

> aka i love felix so much and yes i'm using the "friend sees dead brother in her best friend" trope again but way more in depth lol

1.

She’s standing outside Felix’s dorm room, knocking rapidly and loudly. The knocks don’t stop, even after Felix shouts at her to shut up from the inside of his quarters, and it’s almost like Ingrid enjoys being incessant just to annoy him.

Finally, the door swings open. Felix is standing in the doorway, his hair brushed but not in the usual bun he sported every day. He’s grabbing a handful of hair and swinging a hair tie around it, all while grumbling at Ingrid for being so annoying this early in the morning.

“Do you ever stop? I said I was almost done,” Felix spats, his hair falling apart from his hands and spilling just above his shoulder once more. Felix groans, throwing the broken hair tie onto the floor, and steps back into his room to retrieve another one.

Ingrid is still staring, cocking her head to the side as a neutral expression takes over her face. Felix notices her staring, and he turns to shoot her a look.

“What is it?” he asks in his usual tone, rummaging through his desk drawers to find a replacement hair tie.

“Nothing,” Ingrid replies curtly, waving her hand dismissively. “You just—you look—”

Ingrid stops herself before she can say too much. Every time they talk about him, Ingrid is overcome with a sickening nostalgia. Felix only ever scoffs at the name of his brother now. 

But that’s all Ingrid can see now right before her—Felix in his room, looking in the mirror to cleanly sweep up any stray hairs, but he still manages to miss a few. They fall around the sides of his face, framing his cheeks, and Ingrid remembers the times Glenn used to throw his hair up in a messy ponytail before going off to do knight things.

Felix practically ignores all of Ingrid’s words, because he knows where she’ll go with them.  _ You look so much like Glenn. _ He can’t even count how many times he’s been told that, from childhood friends to noble parents to monastery staff. He’s tying his hair up as neatly as possible, catching any strands but still missing a few more. He looks in the mirror, and all he sees are his brother’s eyes and his brother’s hair. But nothing else is the same. He’s nobody except himself.

After a final attempt at combing his hair up into a tidy bun, Felix successfully pulls it off. He brushes the strands away from his face and doesn’t even look at Ingrid when he exits his quarters and goes on downstairs without her.

2.

She’s training with Felix, a pastime they both enjoyed because it was fun during their academy days. But now, with a raging war just outside the monastery walls, they both train because they don’t want to die.

They’re clashing their weapons, sword and lance, against each other’s with equal force. The clang of silver echoes throughout the training grounds, and nobody bothers them at this time of day. They practice with real weapons—it gives them the real rush they get when they’re on the battlefield. After all, if you only ever train with wooden swords, how are you ever going to hold a real one?

They don’t talk while they spar. They don’t even make eye contact. They just swing and hit, block and evade. They can go at it for hours at a time, never backing down from the other, and Sylvain is usually the one that has to stop the two before they end up killing each other. Ingrid’s lips are pursed, her forehead beading with sweat. Felix’s hair is falling out of its ponytail, and his movements are getting more sloppy as time wears on. 

Felix swings his sword a little too far, and Ingrid quickly dodges. She slams her lance against his sword to send his weapon flying, and in just a few more seconds, she successfully pushes him down and pins his shoulder with her boot against the ground. She points the tip of her lance at Felix’s chin, and Felix gives her a small smile, conceding.

Ingrid raises her boot, withdrawing her lance. She holds a hand out to Felix, and he takes it, both of their palms sweaty. She gives him a short nod and shakes his hand, and Felix nods back.

“I suppose you win this time,” concludes Felix, retracting his hand. He picks up his sword from the ground, sheathing it, then turns to leave the training grounds. They’ve sparred through dinnertime, and Ingrid knows that the dining hall wouldn’t still be open, so she sets aside her lance and asks Felix out for dinner in town.

“That’s alright,” Felix answers, never turning to face her. “I have food back at my quarters. I’m sure Sylvain will take you up on that offer, though.”

“You’re...not wrong. But that’s only assuming he’s not already out with a girl right now,” Ingrid adds, shrugging. Felix shrugs in response, and Ingrid laughs, catching up to speed with him to leave the training grounds for the night.

They walk to Ingrid’s room first, and when she’s closing the doors to her quarters and saying her goodbyes to Felix, he says one more thing to her before they say goodnight.

“You’ve become pretty good,” he starts off, his eyes boring straight through Ingrid with the same intensity of his brother. “You’ll be one of the best knights someday, I’m sure.”

With that, Felix turns on his heels and heads to his own room.

Ingrid closes the door behind her, left alone in the darkness of her room. She presses her back up against the door and stares at the rug on her floor, worn and tattered from five years of wear, and then looks at the shelves of books that have collected dust from neglect. She closes her eyes, and a memory of Glenn crosses her mind, a time he’s told her he’s sure she’ll be one of the greatest lady knights he’s ever seen. 

3.

She’s lying down in the infirmary, afflicted with an injury from the battle she fought just hours earlier. A stray arrow from one of the bandits had struck her, and it wasn’t anything bad, but it sliced deep enough for Manuela to be worried about infections. Felix was the first to notice the wound, a red gash straight along her thigh, and he instructed Ingrid to retreat before it became worse. They argued, the two of them, in the middle of the battlefield, but eventually Felix ordered Ingrid’s beloved pegasus to fly her back to the monastery before anything else could ensue. The mission was simple enough for them to handle without Ingrid, their goal only to rout a few bandits that had been wreaking havoc in the outskirts of the monastery. So Ingrid left, obeying her best friend’s harsh words, knowing he was right in the end.

The door creaks open, but it’s not Manuela again to check up on her. It’s Felix. Ingrid sets her book down and straightens her back, sitting taller against the mountain of pillows Manuela had secured for her.

“Did you guys finish with the bandits?” Ingrid inquires, her eyebrow raised.

“Of course. They were just a bunch of lowly rogues,” Felix answers, closing the door behind him and pulling a chair up to Ingrid’s bedside. He sits and rests his elbows on his knees, his hands folded and his chin rested atop them. He’s staring at the bandages Manuela patched Ingrid’s leg up with, but Ingrid can’t tell what he’s thinking through that thick skull of his.

Ingrid sighs, flipping her book back open to the exact page she left off on. The pair don’t say much more than that, and after a while, Felix falls asleep against the bed, his head laying in his arms beside Ingrid’s thigh. She barely notices him falling asleep at first, as she’s so absorbed in her story, but once she does, she can’t help but smile. The pure image of her best friend sleeping soundly beside her is a sight that gives her great comfort for some reason. With his eyes closed and lips slightly apart, Felix looks rather peaceful.

Ingrid shifts her body to the side ever so slightly, and Felix stirs in his sleep but doesn’t wake. She sets her book back on the nightstand next to the bed and snuggles underneath the thin infirmary covers. Her head is resting parallel to Felix’s, her face facing his from an upside-down angle. She takes this moment of silence to notice the little details on her friend’s face that she somehow never managed to notice before, despite knowing him for so many years. There were a handful of scars, most likely from sparring accidents or minor  _ real _ accidents, and they dance around Felix’s face like an intricate pattern. She traces them with her eyes, counts them along his cheeks. Only four. She decides to name them.

Felix, Sylvain, Dimitri, Ingrid.

Ingrid smiles at her childish idea, naming the scars on Felix’s face. She’ll never tell him that she did something like that, giving names to the cuts and slashes he’s gotten. Something as silly as that would surely elicit an odd look from him, she knew.

The light filtering in from the window shines at an odd angle, showing the depths of the shadows cast across Felix’s face, illuminating some parts but not most. Ingrid brushes a stray strand of hair out of his face, tucking it behind his ear, and she finds that his hair is soft. She always imagined it to be, since it always looked that way, but she never got the chance to see if it was true. She was suddenly overcome with an urge to run her fingers through his hair, and it was always his hair that she was so fascinated by, and she hated to admit that it was most likely because it was the same color as his brother’s.

Ingrid frowns at the thought of him. She can never seem to escape him, not when Felix was always here beside her—but she realizes that she’s been unfair. For years she’s been coming to terms with Glenn’s death just like the rest of them, but she never put into thought how it must’ve impacted Felix. Felix, a meandering sword, a lost light that looked up to Glenn more than anyone else—now he’s cold and distant, just like Glenn had been, and Ingrid wonders if it’s a brotherly thing.

The lines across Felix’s face remind Ingrid of only one person. And that person isn’t around for her to look at anymore.

4.

She’s riding her pegasus, her beloved best friend, into battle. It’s a real battle this time, where they’re at Gronder Field, and the edge of dawn showers the field in a palette of orange and yellow. Ingrid is gripping Lúin in her hand as tightly as possible. Lance in one hand, bridle in the other, determination in her spirit. She charges into the fray without a second to think idly, not a hint of fear in her eyes. Not anymore. Not when her dream of becoming a knight was close enough to be in reach now. She just needed to manage until the end of this war.

Ingrid wasn’t weak. She could hold off a considerable amount of Imperial soldiers on her own. Her speed allowed her to zip through bodies and evade fatal flying arrows. Her strength wasn’t particularly on par with Felix’s, but she still held many other advantages. She scans the area quickly when she’s given a second to breathe.

She sees Felix in the distance. He’s fighting on his own, as he usually did, wielding his sword with grace and, dare she say, beauty. Felix’s skills never ceased to amaze Ingrid, and when she was little, she never seemed to notice Felix’s talents right in front of her.

It was because she was always looking up. Looking up at Glenn.

Ingrid shakes her head of worthless thoughts, having no time to idle on the battlefield. Reminiscing will do her no good, and she’s learned that the hard way as she lived with Felix practically all her life—even after Glenn’s death shook them so hard that they couldn’t truly express themselves to each other anymore.

The enemies are trickling in at a slower rate. Ingrid suspects that Edelgard will retreat at any second now, their forces decimated and the Kingdom’s troops domineering. 

The sun starts to rise. From the sky, Ingrid can see it before anybody else can. Her eyes land on the distant sight of the sun on the horizon, the warm tints coloring her vision orange. She doesn’t remember the last time she’s watched the sun rise, or the sun set, or even took a moment to bask in the sky’s beauty. It feels as if time stops as she takes in the sight of a new dawn.

A shrill yelp shoves Ingrid back into reality, and she frantically scans her surroundings to see what is wrong. Her pegasus is faltering, an arrow pierced through its left wing, and Ingrid clenches the bridle in an attempt to balance herself. They stumble in the air, the pegasus’ wings flapping slower and slower, until finally, they stop completely.

And they fall.

Ingrid doesn’t know if she’s screaming. She doesn’t even hear anything going on around her, or doesn’t know if anybody’s caught sight of her falling from the sky. The sun on the horizon tilts to a horrifying degree as everything in Ingrid’s vision twists. She doesn’t dare close her eyes—not when these could be the last things she see.

Except the last thing she sees before she hits the ground isn’t the sun, or the fires in the distance that Edelgard’s set, or the grass that’s stained red from bloodshed—it’s Felix running towards her, throwing his sword to the ground, his arms outstretched to reach for her.

The impact doesn’t quite knock her out. There’s an awful ringing in Ingrid’s ears that never stops to quiet down. Ingrid grimaces, her vision hazy and white, her body bruised and dirtied. She can’t feel anything except for an endless pounding resonating in her head.

“Ingrid?” a small voice calls out to her. She can hear it, hear it above all the ringing, but she can’t quite make out anything for a few seconds.

That’s when she sees him. A lanky figure, one that she’s grown to remember the details of over the years. But then it was gone in an instant, and Ingrid finds herself thinking about Glenn. Tears sting Ingrid’s eyes, burning her pupils, and her lips are quivering as she murmurs out the only words she can muster to the figure before her.

“I miss you. I miss you so much…”

She weeps, the silent sobs taking control over her chest. She feels like she can’t breathe. Her vision is still hazy, but images start to form back to normal before her. She sees it—the blazing sun, a glimpse of her bloodied pegasus, and a peek of familiar blue hair.

Felix hoists Ingrid up on his back. Edelgard had ordered a retreat, and soldiers ran rampant this way and that. It was hard to tell who was who. Only Felix would curse at a situation like this. His hands graze the edge of Ingrid’s thigh, and he feels the bandage that had been wrapped around it from their excursion just a few days prior. It serves as a cruel reminder to him.

He can’t always save her, even though he so desperately wished he could.

Ingrid mutters a few incomprehensible words into Felix’s ear. It sounds like gibberish, but after a few more words, she finally breathes a name that fills him both with hope and dread.

“Glenn?” whispers Ingrid, and Felix’s heart stops, just like it always did every time he heard her say his name. He frowns, gripping her tighter and clenching his teeth, trudging along Gronder.

“Yeah,” Felix murmurs back softly. “It’s Glenn. I’m right here.”

Ingrid’s breaths grow weaker against Felix’s neck. He picks up his pace in a frantic search for a healer, or the professor, or anyone from Garreg Mach. Anyone.

“You’re not...you’re not Glenn,” Ingrid musters. She uses up the last of her strength to grip Felix’s coat tighter than she’s ever had, tries to pull him close even though she’s already on his back. Tears stream down her face, damping Felix’s shoulder.

“What are you talking about? It’s me, Glenn, I’m right here,” Felix persuades, almost pleading, his voice breaking more and more. He doesn’t think about it, doesn’t stop to get mad at her for mistaking him for his brother again. 

She was always doing that, looking for Glenn in Felix’s eyes. It always made Felix angry when she did. It was enough torture looking in a mirror every day and trying to convince yourself you’re nobody but you. But shadows always followed Felix, and the torment of ‘not being Glenn’ haunted him everywhere he went.

This wasn’t what he wanted. In that moment, Felix pleads to the goddess: he doesn’t want to trade his best friend for escaping Glenn’s shadow. No, never.

Ingrid coughs, splattering blood onto Felix’s coat. “S...Silly,” she croaks. She tries to wipe the blood off, but her arms can’t move. She’s lost feeling in her fingers.

“You’re Felix. You’re nobody else.”

Felix blinks, hard. A wave of emotion washes over him, something he’s never felt before, something he doesn’t remember feeling since he was a child. Something wells up in his chest, and it bursts throughout his body, coursing through his veins and blood. He’s crying. He’s crying and crying and wishing the tears would stop, but nothing prevents them from spilling down his cheeks and dripping onto the grass. Nothing stops him from falling to his knees, the weight of Ingrid and the years he’s suppressed his pain crushing him into the earth.

Mercedes will be the one to find them. The Blue Lions will have looked through Gronder Field high and low for any remaining survivors, and they will find Felix on the dirt cradling someone else they know. They will call his name but he won’t respond, and they will mournfully watch as Felix weeps into the soil he lost his best friend on. 


End file.
